PHOTOGRAPHY

My Mother turns 90

I am working on a blurb book this week for my Mother who turns 90 in May. It is a book of photographs of her and about her. This book is not a eulogy; she is not dead but very much alive. She has always hated to have her picture taken and the only time anyone could get a good one is when she was unaware of the photographer. I have been searching far and wide for photographs of her. There seem to be whole periods of her life when she was not photographed. My Father turned 90 three and a half years ago, and I did a book for him. It was amazing how many images were made of him; he loved to be photographed and his mother, Bertha Neuhauser was a serious amateur photographer. I had too many photographs of Dad to fit in a 160 page book. On the other hand, my Mother was the daughter of an itinerant logger in Western Washington. The family moved each year (sometimes twice a year) and did not seem to place that much importance on pictures of themselves. Still the book will be a story of a life well-lived, and after she met my father, it looks like a life with someone with whom she was in love. Who could ask for more? The photographs featured here are from the first page of the book: thumbnails of her grandparents, parents, siblings, her wedding day, then pregnant with her fourth child (that would be me), reading to the other three. Here’s to my Mother and to blurb.com (and other self publishing programs) who give us an easy way to organize and edit family photographs.